1. Field of the Invention
The present invention is directed toward graphical user interfaces for operating and accessing information on a computer, and more particularly, to a three-dimensional (“3D”) interactive computing interface and sorting interface comprising information from real-time and static sources, including, but not limited to, meta search results from the Web; information from APIs, webservices, search engines, application programs, and networks; and files on the end user's desktop.
2. Description of Related Art
Currently, people use computers by inputting information into the computer to achieve a given output. Often this can be a series of tedious steps (mouse clicks and keyboard inputs) to run applications and documents or navigate to information. To get to new computing experiences, people often have to close their current applications and documents, hide them or overlap them on a finite desktop by drawing them on top of each other, and then mine through folders within folders to find them again at a later date. The user's desktop is finite, and one must redo the same tasks over and over again. This wastes time by (i) requiring many mouse clicks to open and close documents, (ii) requiring one to remember all the combinations of programs and documents one might need for a given purpose and (iii) requiring one to create elaborate hierarchical folder systems to aid in the process of storing and recalling applications and documents. This is primarily due to the limited space the end user has on their desktop.
People currently compute within operating systems that present computer output, such as documents, applications, and operating system's interface in a 2D (two-dimensional) visual display. After initially being loaded into the computer by the boot program, the operating system controls all the other programs in a computer. Typically, the component of the operating system that summons the style in which this output is displayed is called the GUI or graphical user interface. A successful GUI will use screen presentations including metaphors that utilize graphic elements such as icons to make an operating system's input and output easier to manage. Most computer operating systems incorporate a GUI that utilizes two-dimensional graphics to capture, process, and output all input from an end user in a 2D form—having height and width only.
This output is usually confined within a window that is drawn on a finite-sized desktop, i.e., the working area of a computer, that has a given length and width. When the computer's output exceeds this finite working graphical area, elements of the GUI (the windows) are typically drawn on top of each other such that the GUI components overlap one another other. In some operating systems, a shadow is drawn beneath these overlapping windows on the desktop to make them appear as if they have depth. This technique allows an end user to identify the overlapping windows more easily.
We live in a 3D (three-dimensional) world where we see that objects not only have a horizontal position (x) and vertical position (y) but also have depth (z) that is also known as time, according to the three-dimensional coordinate system of mathematics. This notion of expressing depth or time in a visual computer metaphor is important for the creation of a visual history of the end user's computing sessions. By plotting new output of the computer (instead of replacing) in a virtual space that does not overlap or substitute what exists on the finite desktop, a new virtual space through depth and time is created. For example, if one were to pull up the webpage for the URL http://www.yahoo.com, and then click on a hyperlink (e.g., finance), the current webpage in its window would be replaced by the webpage for Yahoo! finance.
3D has shown itself in computing primarily in the following areas: (1) games, (2) CAD/medical visualization, and (3) virtual worlds. A virtual world is a computer-simulated environment that its users can inhabit and interact with via avatars. This habitation usually is represented in the form of two- or three-dimensional graphical representations of humanoids (or other graphical or text-based avatars).
The navigation window of many desktop operating systems use controls and buttons to allow end users to navigate to other folders and windows in the hierarchical structure of the file system. Often, in navigating to new windows, the new windows replace the display of the current window. Accordingly, it would be very desirable to provide an improved graphical user interface that allows the user to efficiently navigate though a virtual space wherein groups of windows can be easily organized, stored, and retrieved.